Seth and Aiden, I hope one day you stumble upon this and read it, and realize that what you are going through is not your fault. You were always both good kids, and you are both growing into strong and intelligent young men with good hearts, and I am very proud of you. Your sister Haley misses you both very much, and she hopes very much that she can be reunited with you one day.

As for me, I am broken. I can’t fight anymore. You have both been on my mind and in my heart every single day. While I cherish my memories of you, missing you has been almost unbearable. My grief and longing for my sons has consumed me, every single day. I can’t go on like this anymore. I have to try to put it away and focus on other things. I have to learn how to accept that you are gone, and get back to living my life. My door and my heart will always be open to both of you. Please believe that I don’t blame you for any of this, and I’m so sorry for what you’ve had to go through. I am also sorry for the mistakes I have made along the way, and I hope you can find peace and healing from the hurts I have caused by failing you.

Remember to be kind and forgiving to each other. The turmoil, strife, and distance between you two is not because of who you are, but because you have been played against each other. Don’t let the fact that you are treated differently drive a wedge between you. You are brothers, and you are both my sons, no matter what. I love you both – yesterday, today, and always.

With love from your father,

Walter Singleton

PS: Should you ever decide to see me, I will be in Orlando, like always, and not hard to find. You can look me up on the Orange County Clerk website, https://myeclerk.myorangeclerk.com/Cases/Search , and find the name of my lawyer, who can put you in contact with me. Also, if you ever find yourselves in trouble, please seek me out. My door will always be open to you, and I will do whatever I can to help you.

Please remember: When we want to be in love, we sometimes see the person through rose-colored glasses, and all the red flags just look like flags.

What Is Emotional Abuse?

Emotional abuse is a set of behaviors in which a person manipulates, coerces, controls, belittles and terrorizes another person repeatedly. Chronic emotional abuse takes a toll on victims, causing them to struggle with depression, anxiety, feelings of worthlessness, hopelessness and learned helplessness. In extreme cases, long-term emotional abuse can cause symptoms of PTSD or Complex PTSD.

When one person emotionally abuses another, it can include the following behaviors:

Calling the victim names.

Mocking, shaming or humiliating the victim.

Ignoring the victim and emotionally withdrawing from them.

Threatening the victim or coercing them into activities they don’t want to engage in.

Making cruel remarks towards the victim regarding their appearance, personality, lifestyle, career choices or friends.

Verbally assaulting and insulting the victim, sometimes under the guise of “joking.”

Emotionally invalidating the partner or pathologizing their emotions.

Subjecting them to overt and covert put-downs as well as rage attacks.

Using intimidation as a control tactic.

Controlling the victim’s finances.

Micromanaging the victim’s social life.

Isolating the victim from friends and family.

Stonewalling the victim during discussions.

Giving victims the silent treatment for no apparent reason.

Gaslighting the victim into believing that they are imagining things or are oversensitive when they call out the abuse.

Repeatedly treating the victim with contempt, scorn and disdain.

There are also many other underhanded and subtle ways in which a victim can be emotionally abused, such as triangulation (bringing in the presence of a third party to abuse by proxy), smear campaigns (spreading rumors or gossip to ruin the victim’s reputation), and hot and cold behavior (pushing the victim away and emotionally withdrawing, intermittently throwing in periods of affection). Emotionally abusive partners may also lie pathologically and lead double lives, causing their victims to invest in a false partnership that ultimately brings harm and devastation.

How To Tell If You’re Being Emotionally Abused

Here are fifty “loaded” questions you should ask yourself if you think you’re being emotionally abused in a relationship. These questions take into account the fact that you already suspect you’re being abused. Your answers to these questions can give you insight regarding the emotionally abusive behaviors you might be currently experiencing, can help you to identify the red flags of abuse and assess the level of toxicity in your relationship.

1. Does your partner enjoy humiliating you in public?

2. What is the worst way in which your partner has used your own insecurities against you?

3. Do you find that the way your partner treated you in the beginning of the relationship is unrecognizable from the way your partner treats you now?

4. How often does your partner make you feel sorry for them after mistreating you?

5. Are you persistently made to feel guilty for voicing your concerns in the relationship?

6. Does your partner shame you about qualities or traits you have that they once praised?

7. Does your partner shut down conversations about their behavior before they even have a chance to begin?

8. Is your partner nicer and more respectful to others in public than they are to you behind closed doors?

9. When your partner gives you the silent treatment, do they usually explain themselves or do they continue to ignore you and come back only to pretend like nothing ever happened?

42. Has your partner ever made you feel guilty for not having sex with them?

43. Do you fear leaving your partner, out of the fear that they might harm you or harm themselves?

44. Does your partner discourage you from pursuing dreams or goals that would make you independent of them?

45. How often do you feel like you’re pleading for your partner’s affection or attention?

46. How many times has your partner insulted you and made you feel terrible, all while claiming “it was just a joke”?

47. Have you been told you’re too sensitive when you start setting boundaries with your partner?

48. When your partner is acting kind, does it seem out of place with the way they usually act?

49. Does your partner treat you tenderly and affectionately one second, only to pull back and coldly withdraw?

50. When your partner tells you they love you, do you have a hard time believing them because the way they act is anything but loving?

The Impact of Emotional Abuse on the Survivor

When emotional abuse takes place in childhood, it wreaks havoc on the mental architecture of the brain, affecting areas such as the amygdala, the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex. These areas of the brain help with emotional regulation, learning, memory, focus, cognition and planning.

Many survivors of emotional abuse, whether they suffered it in childhood, adulthood or both, struggle with a sense of powerlessness as they are repeatedly put down. As a result of these adverse experiences, they may turn to self-destructive behavior, become trauma-bonded to their abusers and find it difficult to leave the toxic relationship.

I was asked a question recently about how one can recover as an alienated child. Clearly the person asking the question was beginning the process of working through the reasons why they, as a young adult, may think about the world in a different way to other people. In responding to the question, I found myself wandering the backstreets of the world of the alienated child again. A world which is dimly lit at best and at worst, is full of shadows and secrets and lies, to such an extent that reality based thinking is more or less impossible. It got me thinking, how does a child recover from the experience of psychological splitting and what is the psychological journey to full health that must be taken?

The process of psychological splitting, which is the strongest symptom of alienation, drives a child back into an infantile state of mind…

Sometimes, in the midst of tragedy, good things can happen. I am extremely happy to report that my daughter Haley has been reunited with her biological brother, Charles! I wrote about Charles last year in my post Extended family, how he was in foster care, along with his sister, with my family many years ago. Charles was removed due to some accusations against him by my ex-wife that now, in hindsight, were almost certainly false. Charles was taken out of my home while I was away on Basic Training with the military in 2006 – he was there when I left and gone when I returned. Haley always missed her older brother, and often expressed a desire to reconnect with him.

This weekend, that re-connection happened! I found Charles’ information online, and contacted his adoptive mother, who was thrilled to hear from me. We set up a meeting that morning! After a tearful reunion and a huge lunch, Charles and Haley spent the day together at Seaworld. It had been 11 years since they’d seen each other. So much had happened in over a decade. But to see brother and sister together again was amazing.

I went to a funeral a short time ago. While nearly all funerals are sad, this one was particularly heartbreaking, as the deceased had passed away suddenly, unexpectedly, and at a relatively young age. A mother, still in the prime of middle age, was taken without warning. A large and loving family had gathered from all over the United States to grieve the passing of a woman that they all had fond memories of. Although I didn’t know the woman at all, it was obvious that she would be missed by a great many people.

While I sat and watched the family pour out their grief during the funeral, and then later the burial, a strange emotion came over me. It was an emotion I would have never expected to feel at a funeral, and it took me some time to identify it. It was envy. I felt envious of the family that had gathered to mourn the loss of someone they loved so much. I felt ashamed of this emotion at first, and I tried to bury it. I was there to support someone who had lost a close family member, this was not the time to be focused on myself. But later on, once I was alone, I began to reflect on what I had felt, and more importantly, why.

I obviously didn’t envy the family for losing a loved one. I have many people in my life whom I love dearly, and I would not want to lose any of them. I have had loved ones die, and I certainly did not want that to happen to again. What I envied was not their grief, but rather that they were able to express it. My sons are gone. Not dead, but just… gone. They are gone from my life, and the lives of my family. When my wife filed false allegations against me, and took my children from me, it was emotionally devastating. It was a horrible feeling, a great loss, and it was very painful, but it didn’t feel like death, with its shock and finality and hopelessness – at least, not at first.

Unlike with death, there were moments of brief hope. For five long years, every event was a chance at getting my sons back into my life. Every time I went to court, I believed the judge would hear my story, and award me time with my children. When I was finally awarded visitation, I believed I would see them again. When my wife hit me with her car, I thought for sure she would be charged, and I would be able to hug my kids. When my wife burned down her house, and the arson report concluded that she had done it, I thought surely something would change. When my daughter was taken from my wife by Child Protective Services, and I spent nearly a year EARNING her back from foster care, I believed that the authorities would force my wife to reunite both of us with the boys. But each and every time I was disappointed. And slowly, creeping up more and more each day, the feeling that they were dead formed like a malignant tumor, growing inside my heart.

Now, it feels like my sons are dead. I know that they are not, but they have been removed from my life as surely as if they were placed in wooden boxes and lowered into the ground. No voices, no pictures, no word of what they doing has come my way. I don’t even know what they look like today. I know from letters that were sent to the judge, and from what my daughter has told me, that they hate me. They believe I am a terrible person, and that they want nothing to do with me. This is all so different from the relationship we had before. I was once their hero, their confidant, their champion – I was their father. The last time I saw Aiden he was sick, but he insisted on spending time with me, even though he felt awful. The last time I saw Seth, I held him while he cried in my arms, as I tried to console his fears about his parents splitting up. Now, in their minds, I am dangerous, a cancer – someone to avoid at all costs. Such has my wife poisoned their minds and hearts against me.

Everything I knew about my sons is gone. Our relationship no longer exists. The children they once were no longer exist. It has been five years now – they are both approaching 15 years of age, well into their teens. To me, they are still nine years old, frozen in my mind at the age I last saw them. But the children I knew have grown up, and every connection I had with them has been severed. Even if we were reunited tomorrow, nothing that we once had has been preserved – we would have to start our relationship from scratch. I have lost my sons.

Throughout history, our society has developed ways of dealing with grief. We have a funeral for the deceased. We tell stories of fond memories with them. We look at photographs of the ones we’ve lost, and we remember the joy they brought to our lives. We pour out our grief, and those around us acknowledge the loss, and they comfort us. Then, as the final gesture, we lower a casket into the ground, or present an urn of ashes to the family. The survivors go through the stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. And often there is a stone at the final resting place, a marker of the one who has been removed from our lives. I will see none of that.

I will not get to hear others laugh telling stories of my sons, or cry over how much they will be missed. I will not be able to gather my family together in mourning, and watch a collage of photographs showing their lives. I will not see a casket lowered into the ground, or hold an urn, as a tangible reminder that my sons are gone. I will never allow myself to fully reach acceptance, because no matter how distant and dim hope becomes, it is always there, taunting me, just out of my reach. Instead of bringing comfort, that hope has become a hand in the graveyard, reaching up from the ground and grasping my ankle, holding me there. There is no plaque in the ground, no marble headstone, nothing to indicate the day my sons were taken from me. My great loss is invisible and unacknowledged.

This article has really helped me to understand what I’ve been going through, and to see that my emotions are normal for my circumstances.

“The death of a child is indisputably one of the most incredibly horrible tragedies one can imagine. Whether by sudden accidental circumstance, or by a more lengthy cause as in illness, the loss of a child is undeniably painful to experience. Painful to the parents, parents to the family, and painful to anyone related to the child. Never knowing the laughter of that child again or the tears, the joys and the accomplishments is a pain no parent should ever have to endure, and yet it happens. No one might be to blame. It can just happen”. (Tim Line)

Imagine a similar pain and the same sense of loss, with one exception-the parent is very much aware that the child is alive.

The effects of Parental Alienation, Parental Child Abduction and retention are very similar to the loss of a child in some other way…

Reading this seemed like an echo of my own life and thoughts. Sometimes I even ask myself, “WHY did you wait nearly 20 YEARS before finally getting out of your abusive marriage??”. This blog posts puts my answers into words that I haven’t been able to find for myself.

I came across someone on Twitter who is doing some research on narcissistic abuse and struggling with understanding why victims of narcissistic abuse stay in the abusive relationships. I reached out and recommended that they read the #whyIstayed hashtag where victims in all types of abusive relationships summarize the reasons why they stayed… and I also recommended that they read this blog. The researcher reached out to me still having a lot of confusion on the topic and asked me outright… why did it take 8 years for you to leave?!?

It’s actually a little surprising to me how complex this question is to answer, and I think that reflects the complexity within an abusive relationship. There are so many layers to why I stayed, and that is because there are so many layers to the manipulation and abuse that I withstood at the hands of The Narcissist.